This project is designed to build the public administration capability and consolidate the process of learning and sharing public service reform practices and experiences in Africa. In particular, the project will collect and collate basic data on public administration and document experiences and practices on public administration reform in the region. It will develop a consolidated report assessing the broad range of existing indicators on governance in the region. The project will build a website with comparative information on public administration and contact information for departments in African region and beyond. The project will also organize a forum for senior officials involved in Public Service Reform in the region.

• Report dated February 2003
• Case Studies, Comparative Data, Governance Indicators
  

The project’s objective is to create a global network of officials, analysts, researchers and donors involved in the decentralization of education. This network is the first attempt to facilitate knowledge sharing; stimulate within-country, cross-regional and global learning; strengthen the capacity of officials, researchers, practitioners, and donors to analyze and monitor the progress of the decentralization in education, and contribute to the effectiveness of donor agency, and institutional development efforts. This work is particularly innovative in analyzing the issue of accountability in education decentralization across various country contexts. A website containing international experience in strengthening accountability in the decentralization of education will be constructed and linked to sites of local research and professional associations/networks in each country, and the World Bank’s Decentralization site. There will be organized an international workshop for network members to exchange experiences face-to-face and create the foundation for sustained exchange of global experiences in education decentralization.

To view progress on this project, please click on

The project’s objective is to document 15-20 new tools in 2003 for the Corruption Fighters’ Tool Kit. This Tool Kit is the first instrument created to share in an organized and systematized fashion civil society anticorruption experiences from around the world. All contributions to the Tool Kit will be prepared by civil society organizations in the field in coordination with the Transparency International Secretariat. The tools will be described in a concrete and practical language in order to make them accessible to as wide an audience as possible. They will be available on the TI website and in print to be added to the Tool Kit binder published in 2002.

Click HERE to see tool kit.

The project's objective is to provide access to governance indicators and to test their relevance to political decision-makers and other commentators as well as to their political acceptability. This project suggests a new approach to governance indicators: building consensus around some practical and policy-relevant indicators instead of presenting them as technical external assessments. The governance indicators will be available on the website of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) at the OECD. This website will encourage dialogue and facilitate an e-discussion of the pros and cons of the various candidate indicators.

To view the website please click on Development Indicators.

The project's objective is to develop indicators of parliamentary performance in the areas of oversight, legislation and representation. The indicators will help to assess needs of, and measure the impact of parliaments' capacity building efforts. The project will create a unique data set of parliamentary performance indicators that can be utilized for cross-country analysis. In the fist phase, a working paper, explaining how the indicators are developed and how they can be used, will be prepared. The data set of indicators will be uploaded on an interactive website that will allow to select and group questions, countries and regions to generate specific reports.

To view the project's resuls, please click on

The project's description is: Management of official records as evidence of policies, transactions, activities, and entitlements is a prerequisite for meeting governance objectives.In the past, there has been no methodology for evaluating and strengthening official records systems. This project involves building an innovative new Records Management Capacity Framework to link governance functions and the records and information required to support them, to identify capacity requirements, and to build relevant and practical solutions. Creating the Framework will involve developing four deliverables:

• a records management diagnostic tool to define capacity requirements in relation to international standards
• logically-structured banks of questions required to identify stakeholder requirements for records and information in relation to two key functions: human resource management and financial management
• a detailed analysis of the materials required to meet capacity building requirements
• an open-source software application to link and deliver the three components of the Framework and make it available free of charge in the public domain.

The RMCAS tool is available on UK National Archives website at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/RMCAS/

The project is aimed at identifying corruption barriers hampering the economic development of local administrations (gminas), increase transparency in gmina’s financial management and procurement decisions. The diagnostic work will focus on a particular gmina that will be selected in a transparent way according to announced criteria. The innovativeness of this project implies that rather than detecting corruption from outside, the selected gmina and other local administrations will take an active part in this process. An action plan based on findings from the analysis of legal and administrative framework, in which gminas operate, will be prepared. A manual providing guidelines for local businesses on how to stimulate the improvement of gminas’ services will be developed. A legal and business advisory center, in which experts of the Transparency International (TI), Poland will offer advice and legal support for potential entrepreneurs and training courses on effective service delivery for staff of the selected gmina, will be organized. In addition, a website serving as a virtual advisory will be developed by TI, Poland.

Project Report (English).

Project Outputs (Polish)

• Main Report
• Manual
• Best Practice

The project is aimed to empower citizens and rural local governments to monitor and play an active role in preventive health system in Karnataka State, India. The innovation of this project is about distilling and disseminating the "best practices" in engaging civil society in preventive health services. The project is supporting a local initiative to develop tools for assessing the quality of preventive health service delivery. A case study on Karnataka's efforts to integrate local communities in governance of preventive health system will be prepared. The project will also produce short case studies on best practices in other Asian countries in such areas as organization of preventive health services on community level, and civil society monitoring of the enforcement of public health laws and regulations. New tools and case studies will be available at the World Bank's website.

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This project seeks to provide governments, the media, NGOs and others with access to tools for ensuring the accuracy of published data concerning government pay and employment, and for encouraging an informed debate on the significance of the data. It will explore methods for improving the accuracy for government employment totals, including civil service censuses and publication of establishment lists. The project will also review approaches for evaluating the existing pay levels, and designing pay reform strategies. This project, for the first time, will publish core government data via the internet.

Project Output

The project's description is "The project will contribute to the dialog on African public sector reform. The study will categorize public organizations of Ghana into good and poor performers. It will examine how institutional culture, along with internal and external factors, affects the performance of these organizations. Based on these findings, the study will propose a strategy for reforming poorly performing organizations. Findings will be disseminated to government officials and the media via a workshop in Accra, Ghana."

The project is designed to collect information on budget practices, relations between branches and levels of government structures in different countries from all global regions. This project is the first attempt to create a database that will allow comparative analysis of budget practices and procedures across countries. The data set will be available as a raw data for researchers and as processed reports or structured data for other users. Both data formats will be available on the website. The site will have a function to select and group questions, countries and regions to generate specific reports.

Project Output

The project seeks to foster a sustainable debate on governance among high profile academics, thinkers and policymakers from the MNA region and to promote increased awareness of governance issues. In particular, the project will help to consolidate knowledge on governance in the region by strengthening and expanding linkages among intellectuals and local researchers as well as generating governance data. The project will improve the capabilities of local researchers and think tanks across the region through the organization of training of trainers on the generation, use and analysis of governance data. The innovative means of sharing and disseminating knowledge on governance issues will be used by (1) making available existing on-line international resources; (2) building a virtual network to foster information exchange through the use of web-based interactive tools and audio-visual tools; and (3) disseminating the results to a broad audience. The project will also mobilize a pool of local researchers to document lessons learnt and good practices to encourage governance reforms in the region. The innovativeness of this project lies in its effort to provide complementary venues to strengthen the public debate on governance and its emphasis on strengthening and expanding alliances among research and policy institutes across countries, as a way of attenuating country sensitivities.

The objective of this project was to collect and disseminate data on implementation of the recent government reforms in licensing, inspection, registration and certification across regions and agencies, and over time through large-scale survey of small and medium enterprises. The survey covered 1,998 SMEs in 20 Russian regions on the basis of on-site interviews. It measured costs of various regulatory obstacles for businesses that are available on the website . This publicly available data on reform progress can serve now as innovative vehicle for holding government accountable for the implementation of reforms aimed to improve the business environment.

To view the results on project please click on

The project's objective was to develop a methodology to assess the true costs and benefits of e-government applications. In particular, the methodology focused on benefits and hidden costs. The innovation of this project lies in its contribution to unexplored area of measuring costs and benefits of e-government applications. Benefit evaluation is linked to stakeholders' perceptions about improvements in key governance areas such as transparency, corruption, participation and empowerment. The assessment pool included 4 existing e-government applications in India, namely: (1) computerization of Gujarat Check post; (2) on-line issue of land records in Karnataka; (3) Gyandoot-Rural Internet kiosks in MP; and (4) FRIENDS-On-line payment kiosks in Kerala. The results of this assessment are published on the GKSP and World Bank's E-Government websites.

Click HERE to see pictures from field visits to the project site.

To view the results on project please click on

This project's objective was to create a Russian language website on the Russia Public Administration Reform. This was a collaborative effort of the Russian Academy of Public Administration, Department of Public Administration at Moscow State University, Center for Administrative Reformat the Advanced School of Economics, the Institute for Economies in Transition and the World Bank. This project was the first attempt to use the internet technology to support the debate on the role of government and reform choices that Russia faces on federal and regional levels. The Russia Public Administration Reform website was built on the translated material of the Bank's Administrative and Civil Service Reform website and contains the Russian legislation, research literature, survey results and other resources on civil service reform, public administration and governance. The website is facilitating the debate on upcoming civil service and public administration reform programs among public officials, scholars, NGOs and the general public as well as in the media.

To view the website please click on Russian Public Administration Reform.

The project's description is: The project aims to assist governments in Central and East Central European states to build strategic thinking capacities, through a medium term process of dialogue. The Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe, a well established international association (www.nispa.sk), will support the process by establishing a permanent Working Group of academics and officials from the region, supporting the start up meetings of this group and setting up a mechanism for permanent dialogue between academics and practitioners in the form of an interactive web-page as part of the NISPAcee web-site. Particular emphasis will be put on strategic thinking capacities, a key area of weakness in governance in the ECA region. The Working Group will be institutionalized as one of NISPAcee’s permanent working groups (8 already exist) and will continue in the coming years to serve as a forum for dialogue between academics and practitioners on the thematic of the Report to the Club of Rome.

This project is aimed to provide broad public access through a web site to various survey-based indicators of democracy and good governance for 12 African and 15 East European countries. These indicators will enable comparisons of attitudes, perceptions and experiences pertaining to levels of corruption, quality of public services, predictability of government policy, confidence in various public sector institutions, and other aspects of democracy and good governance. This web site will be a uniquely comprehensive tool for obtaining governance-related survey information where indicators based on perceptions of country experts or businesspersons will be complemented by a searchable database of information from citizen surveys. The web site will allow users to generate summary statistics or tables online to enable comparisons across countries, across demographic groups within countries, or over time.

Project Output

Global Barometers Survey

This project was aimed to facilitate sharing of knowledge and experience between taxpayers associations in developing and transition countries, with a special focus on Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This project was a first attempt to create a common network for taxpayers associations in this region. A bilingual (English/Russian) website was developed with comprehensive information about all taxpayers associations in developing and transition countries and a message board that provided a permanent base for cooperation among East European and Central Asian as well as Western taxpayers associations. There was organized the first conference of all taxpayers associations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia that established an institution for regional cooperation - the International Committee for the Protection of Taxpayer Rights.

Click HERE to see pictures from field visits to the project site.

To view the website please click on Taxpayers Associations.

The project is designed to further promote and develop taxpayers associations through experience sharing so that they become effective vehicles for providing knowledge on taxes and taxpayers’ obligations, strengthening taxpayers’ voice and rights, integrating citizens in formulation of tax policy, and building a partnership between taxpayers and government agencies. A bilingual databank on best practices of taxpayers associations and a periodical newsletter featuring experiences of taxpayers associations in promoting tax reform will be developed and available on the project’s website. The databank will be a unique tool providing comprehensive information on numerous projects accomplished by the taxpayers associations with the function to generate structured reports. The special focus will be on the strengthening of the established International Committee for the Protection of Taxpayer Rights in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. There will be jointly conducted cross-country studies on tax reform and problems with tax administration to be presented on the International Taxpayers Conference in September 2003.

The project's objective is to create easy access for Latvian citizens to information on laws, policies and news in order to involve them in policy process. The project will utilize internet technology, especially the interactive tools for communication with society, and the very process of involving people of Latvia in formulation of public policy. First, an internet-based government-citizen communication toolkit will be developed, including advices, experiences, examples and case studies on communication with public. Second, the project will provide training for staff of the line Ministers on how to use this toolkit and other techniques designed under this project. Third, the State Chancellery's Communication Department of Latvia will be provided with a real life learning experience on how to organize public hearings. Finally, the video broadcasting system will be set up at this Department to facilitate public policy dialogue between the politicians, working groups engaged in preparation of laws and people of Latvia who will be affected by these laws.

• Study visit to Europe
• Public Communication Toolkit
• Video conferences on the internet, first one scheduled on June 16